Undertow
by Aeanagwen
Summary: Gaelio dreams of the way the reunion will go. Repeatedly.


Gaelio dreams of the way the reunion will go. He envisions himself walking into the Seven Stars council room behind Rustal Elion and pulling off the mask in front of all of them. He declaims to the family heads what has gone on behind the curtains for the past year, and McGillis has no words convincing enough to save him from the truth. He's exiled in disgrace on the spot.

There are some tweaks to it, of course.

When Gaelio is feeling fanciful, his father breaks down weeping to see his son alive.

When he's feeling particularly vengeful, it's execution instead of exile, and when he closes his eyes, he can almost make himself believe it's McGillis's blood he's feeling on his hands, not Ein's, or Carta's, or his own.

Daydreams. Scripts he writes in his head in expectation of the day. Gratifying, yes, but he tells himself, _You have to be smarter than this._

McGillis has a serpent's tongue; he did even when they were children and he was lying to their tutor to get them out of lessons for a day. The man has never been caught speechless, never; just because Gaelio can't imagine what he'll say when they meet, doesn't mean McGillis won't have the knives already sharpened, lies prepared for the occasion like fine china.

And that's only if it goes the civilized way.

A different reunion: McGillis sways the rest of the Seven Stars; McGillis murders him right there in that vast, airy room; Gaelio bleeds out under the unmoved gazes of the family heads.

Another: Gaelio is on the battlefield when he hears the familiar voice over the comm line; he turns too late, and pain rips through his side, again, as McGillis-Montag murmurs to him, _You were my only friend._

Another: Gaelio is at a wedding; he doesn't know whose. He turns to his mother to ask, and she shushes him just as the ballroom doors open and McGillis walks down the steps with his bride—Almiria, resplendent in her white silk and indigo anemone flowers and beautiful bright ignorance.

These are the dreams that accost him in his sleep, that wrench him awake to a chest tight with fury and helplessness.

There are worse.

Staggering through icy wastes, the shadow of a mobile suit a black outline through roaring winter winds.

He falls to his knees on a frozen lake, only to find himself eye to eye with Carta, locked below the ice. She screams, though he can't hear it, and pounds against the underside of the ice. Sometimes she breaks it, and pulls him down with her. Her arms wrap around him, and into his ear, she whispers, _McGillis, McGillis… Thank goodness, McGillis…_

Or he collapses in front of the mobile suit, which stands taller than the mountains, black as the bones of the world, and it looks down on him with a single eye, red as a dying sun. Sometimes it picks him up, cradles him close, and he freezes to death in the cold steel of its fingers. Sometimes it says, _Specialist-Major, I'm so glad you came. Look—for you…_ And then it plunges that shining black hand into its chest and pulls out Ein's shattered remains, offering them down to Gaelio cupped in both hands like a broken keepsake. Ein looks up at him ( _looks down at him_ ) with blue eyes clouded and dead ( _baleful and red_ ) and smiles and smiles and smiles.

Different eyes—a different blue, a different emptiness—that monstrous child from Tekkadan, no expression on his face but a sort of pinched concentration as his hand tightens around Gaelio's throat. Behind him, the sunlight through Mars' red atmosphere gleams in Montag's silver hair, and McGillis smiles beneath the mask.

Different hands on his throat; Gaelio thrashes against the ground, clawing at his attacker's arms, and when he looks up, he sees only the mask— _Vidar, Vidar, vengeance, there must be_ vengeance—and the cold, clear green light glowing behind it, filling up his vision, drowning him out, pulling him under.

* * *

Gaelio wakes in tangled, sweat-damp sheets, heart hammering hard enough to bruise, chest burning for lack of air, the sounds of his screaming still a faint echo from inside the helmet.

He staggers into the bathroom, locks it behind him, and falls down against the door, opening the helmet—against the doctor's orders, but he just needs to be able to _breathe_ —and carefully, carefully wiping away the tears spilling from the corners of his eyes.

 _You have to be smarter than this,_ he tells himself. _You have to be_ better _than this. It's not too late. Almiria… I won't let him get you too, I promise, I_ promise.

Gaelio breathes out. Lets himself remember—Carta, Ein, Almiria.

McGillis has been very busy the last few months, and things have come to light from behind Gjallarhorn's closed doors that have gone for years—decades—without redress. Though he hates it, Gaelio can see the path between everything that happened—Tekkadan, the Maiden of Revolution, the Alaya-Vijnana, Ein—and the good that's come of it.

But good outcomes aren't justice. There's no clemency to be granted to Carta's name. Ein is spoken of with hushed horror and judgement when his name is spoken at all. Their memories will be stained in history forever.

There's only one kind of _justice_ Gaelio can think of for that.

He pushes himself back up to his feet, still a little shaky, and closes the mask back up. The internal systems hum back to life; somewhere behind his ear, something emits a thin whine. There's an air purifier or something in there that he must have jostled loose in his thrashing. Something to see Medical about in the morning.

He breathes out, a faint mechanical reverb.

In the morning.

His chest hurts. It's memory, it's only memory. All the same…

Absently rubbing his hand over his heart, Gaelio imagines how the reunion will go.

 _McGillis. I've been waiting to see you again._

He wanders out of his room and heads down towards the mobile suit bay. Gundam Vidar will be waiting, silent and patient. The image passes through Gaelio's head, brief and lurid—the mobile suit setting its boot on McGillis's jaw, closing its hand on the roof of his mouth, and _tearing_.

He shakes it off.

 _McGillis. I've been waiting._

END

* * *

NOTES:

o Vidar, the Norse vengeance aesir Gaelio has named himself after, is the slayer of Fenris—the wolf represented on McGillis's family crest. The last bit of the story is a reference to this.

o Anemones are a flower with very mixed symbolism, particularly once you get away from florists' sites—they'll tell you the meaning is anticipation, and a charm against poison, and will scrupulously avoid mentioning the associations with death, spurned love, the reputation for fragility, and the fact that the flower is, in fact, poisonous.


End file.
